Anomalisa is that rare film that mingles high ambition with near errorless achievement. Few directors, in this case two, Duke Johnson, and Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York), would have undertaken such a risky project, one hinging on a nominal sketch, basically, and complete it with such a stunning success. The most initially striking thing about […]
VIFF 2015
Songs My Brothers Taught Me – VIFF 2015 Review
A longing for independence, direction, and a youthful exhilaration are at the crux of Chloé Zhao piercingly sad yet stunningly beautiful debut feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me. As it’s lyrical handle suggest, there’s an austere approach to Zhao’s portrait of life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and the story is […]
Experimenter – VIFF 2015 Review
Somber yet simultaneously mischievous, Michael Almereyda’s (Nadja) latest and most vigorous picture yet, Experimenter, is a visually and verbally spellbinding showpiece. Beginning in 1961 at Yale, renowned social psychologist Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) wielded the baton on a series of psychological experiments in which subjects believed they were administering electrical shocks to an amiable and […]
The Lobster – VIFF 2015 Review
The Lobster gets its epithet from its conscience-stricken central character, David (Colin Farrell), who has chosen the marine crustacean as the animal he will become if, after 45 days at the hotel resort he’s staying at, he hasn’t found a mate. His reasons for wanting to be a lobster are two fold; they have a […]
Son of Saul – VIFF 2015 Review
Hungarian director and screenwriter László Nemes makes an astonishing debut – one of the greatest in recent memory – with the heart-rending and brutal Holocaust drama, Son of Saul. Much to Nemes credit he manages to eschew all the usual clichés telling the story of Saul (Géza Röhrig, brilliant), a Hungarian Jew forced to help […]
Into The Forest – VIFF 2015 Review
Alternating between somber and chimerical makes for an erratic and often heavy-handed ordeal in Canadian filmmaker Patricia Rozema’s (I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing) latest film, the dystopian drama, Into The Forest. It was the formidable lead actress, Ellen Page (Juno), who first brought the Jean Hegland novel about societal collapse and a return to nature, […]